Product details

Michael Kieran Harvey plays new music for
keyboard

All my life I have been fascinated by the interaction of science
and art, especially with music. In an age where art music seems
to have been relegated to the area of palliative care by "market
forces", the uncompromising approach of some composers still
willing to embrace science and the natural world seems to me very
much in the spirit of the Enlightenment: to oppose the monolithic
hegemonies of church, state and ideology, and instead fight for
pluralism and individual freedom, to think for oneself, and to
pursue one's curiosity.

Martin Friedel is one such composer - a trained scientist, he is
also one of the few Australian composers able to earn his living
purely from composing. His School pieces are brief but compelling
snapshots of discoveries unimaginable without the Enlightenment.
Stars and our relationship to nature are the undercurrents of
Graham Hair's 3 extant transcendental etudes. Douglas Knehans'
Boyd Panels were written at Bundanon, and conjure up the
stillness, diversity and playfulness of the natural world, so
breathtakingly evident in the Shoalhaven area of New South Wales.
The failure of the Biosphere project is a reminder of how reliant
we are on millions of other species for our survival on Earth,
and in Australia this species diversity is increasingly only
possible through private oases like Bundanon. Surreal images of
nature like Boyd's crucified trees link in my mind to Paredes'
Triptico, where the Calligram, or beautiful symbol, could be the
intricate equations of string theory, or A Contra Luz, against
the light, could represent the bending of light by gravity.

This makes Coruscations an appropriate inclusion,
especially as the recent explanation for the Auroras surrounding
the earth are "magnetic reconnections", the result of magnetic
field lines colliding and releasing large amounts of kinetic
energy towards earth. I grew up with an expectation of a lifetime
pursuit of music which was propelled by the idea of the end of
posterity. The awe-inspiring scale of such cosmic forces makes
human hubris seem pitifully trite, yet makes human creativity and
love seem all the more endearingly mysterious.

— Michael Kieran Harvey

Duration: 74 min.

Booklet includes programme notes and biographical information on composers and performer.